Google earned $3 billion from China last year, and TikTok alone contributed $300 million

Tong Ling from Aofei Temple
Produced by Quantum Bit | Public Account QbitAI

According to The Information, Google's total revenue in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan increased by more than 60% last year, with revenue exceeding US$3 billion.

People familiar with the matter said that the biggest reason for Google's revenue growth in China is that some Chinese technology companies are advertising for their overseas expansion.

The big money sponsors behind this are all big technology companies that are familiar to domestic users. For example, ByteDance’s overseas version of “Douyin” TikTok spent more than 300 million US dollars on Google overseas advertising last year .

The New York Times stated that TikTok's promotional videos can be frequently seen jumping all over the screen on Google Search, Play Store, Google Ad Alliance and Youtube, and the scale of the advertising is staggering.

In addition to TikTok overseas, Alibaba is also one of Google's major financial backers. Last year, it strongly promoted the overseas Alipay wallet in Southeast Asia, and its campaign "Experience Singapore, Let's Alipay" even "brainwashed" the local people.

In addition, Google has also stepped up its efforts to attract small Chinese customers, and many small Chinese financiers have also purchased advertising space on platforms such as Google Search and Gmail.

Corresponding to the growth of Google's advertising business, the size of Google China's advertising team, which is responsible for connecting with small Chinese customers on advertising matters, has doubled in the past year and now has more than 200 people.

The Information analyzed that the trend was caused by the slowdown in domestic user growth of Chinese 2C technology companies last year, which prompted companies to look for opportunities to enter the international market.

It may not just be Google that will benefit. Currently, Chinese companies are also spending a considerable amount on advertising on Facebook and Amazon.

Brian Wieser, a senior analyst at consulting firm Pivotal Research Group, pointed out that China is an important source of Facebook's advertising revenue. In 2018, Chinese companies brought Facebook a total revenue of between $5 billion and $7 billion, accounting for 12% of Facebook's overall advertising revenue ($55 billion).

However, like Google, a Facebook spokesperson said it had no comment on the matter.